Invasive and Minimally Invasive Evaluation of Diffusion Properties of Sugar in Muscle

In this article, the use of diffuse reflectance (
R
_d
) spectroscopy is explored to evaluate the diffusion properties of water and sucrose in skeletal muscle during optical clearing treatments. Treating muscle samples with sucrose-water solutions with different osmolarities, collimated transmittance (
T
_c
) and
R
_d
measurements were performed to obtain the diffusion time (
τ
) and the diffusion coefficient (
D
) values that characterize the unique water and sucrose fluxes in the muscle and also the optical clearing mechanisms designated as tissue dehydration and refractive index matching. Considering the
R
_d
measurements, the estimated
τ
and
D
values for water in the muscle were 63.1s and 1.72×10
^-6
cm
²
/s, while the ones estimated for sucrose were 261s and 4.86×10
^-7
cm
²
/s. Comparing these values with the ones estimated from the
T
_c
measurements, the relative differences observed for
τ
and
D
were 1.6% and 2.8% in the case of water and 0.3% and 0.4% in the case of sucrose.